A friend asked me a few questions about the phone, and I thought our little discussion might be useful for anyone else interested in this particular model. Unfortunately, I don't have time to do a comprehensive review, but here's what I think after two days of usage -
Friend: Tell me about build quality, screen quality, how responsive it is, battery life etc.
Me: Build quality is surprisingly good. Doesn't feel like a 12.5k phone at all. It comes with a rubberized back panel and two scratch guards if you like those things. It's not the prettiest phone around, but it doesn't look cheap whatsoever. If anything, it looks like a Galaxy S2.
I really like the screen. It's not 1280x720 but with a PPI of 245, it definitely sharp enough on a 4.5" IPS panel. There's a bug with the software however, and this smudges the wallpapers you set, giving off the impression of a 65k screen. The current workaround is to set your wallpaper through a custom launcher, or another 3rd party app like a file explorer. Besides that, it's the sharpest phone display I've used till date, but I upgraded from an old Galaxy S.
The phone itself is very snappy and responsive, but I'm really annoyed that I'm still seeing the dreadful Android "micro lags" on transition and window opening animations. I ended up disabling them altogether in Developer Options. However, it's a purely visual problem and not actual slowdowns - apps open instantly, but the opening animations are jerky at times. I should probably point out that I'm highly sensitive to framerate drops and things like that thanks to a few hundred years of gaming, and that other users don't seem to be noticing it as much (my definition of buttery smooth is an iPhone.). I also think it's a software issue again, and root + a custom ROM should smooth things out. Overall, it seems to be performing really well, even when I have plenty of apps open at the same time. Benchmarks are quite impressive.
As for battery life, I did the first full charge on Sunday morning at 5 AM. I ended up using the phone the entire day to browse the web since my PC isn't working. It went to 5% at 1 AM earlier today.
I bought the phone from Hello World in Adyar, Chennai for 12.5k.
Friend: Tell me about build quality, screen quality, how responsive it is, battery life etc.
Me: Build quality is surprisingly good. Doesn't feel like a 12.5k phone at all. It comes with a rubberized back panel and two scratch guards if you like those things. It's not the prettiest phone around, but it doesn't look cheap whatsoever. If anything, it looks like a Galaxy S2.
I really like the screen. It's not 1280x720 but with a PPI of 245, it definitely sharp enough on a 4.5" IPS panel. There's a bug with the software however, and this smudges the wallpapers you set, giving off the impression of a 65k screen. The current workaround is to set your wallpaper through a custom launcher, or another 3rd party app like a file explorer. Besides that, it's the sharpest phone display I've used till date, but I upgraded from an old Galaxy S.
The phone itself is very snappy and responsive, but I'm really annoyed that I'm still seeing the dreadful Android "micro lags" on transition and window opening animations. I ended up disabling them altogether in Developer Options. However, it's a purely visual problem and not actual slowdowns - apps open instantly, but the opening animations are jerky at times. I should probably point out that I'm highly sensitive to framerate drops and things like that thanks to a few hundred years of gaming, and that other users don't seem to be noticing it as much (my definition of buttery smooth is an iPhone.). I also think it's a software issue again, and root + a custom ROM should smooth things out. Overall, it seems to be performing really well, even when I have plenty of apps open at the same time. Benchmarks are quite impressive.
As for battery life, I did the first full charge on Sunday morning at 5 AM. I ended up using the phone the entire day to browse the web since my PC isn't working. It went to 5% at 1 AM earlier today.
I bought the phone from Hello World in Adyar, Chennai for 12.5k.
